“Election fraud,” said the president. “You’ve heard the term? This will end it, hopefully.”
The “This” being an Executive Order dated March 25, 2025, entitled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
Interestingly, the opening unfavorably compares the American ways of voting with foreign nations.
“In tabulating votes, Germany and Canada require use of paper ballots counted in public by local officials,” the order explains, “which substantially reduces the number of disputes as compared to the American patchwork of voting methods that can lead to basic chain-of-custody problems.” The document adds that “countries like Denmark and Sweden sensibly limit mail-in voting to those unable to vote in person and do not count late-arriving votes.”
“It is the policy of my Administration to enforce [2 U.S.C. 7 and 3 U.S.C. 1] and require that votes be cast and received by the election date established in law,” Trump’s order states.
Well, California might have to start reporting the results of congressional races in under a month.
More consequently, the EO directs “the Secretary of Homeland Security” and “the Secretary of State” to “ensure that State and local officials have … access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.”
The exact opposite policy from Biden’s refusal to help those seeking to enforce citizen-only voting policies.
In full disclosure, as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting, I helped eight states pass Citizen Only Voting Amendments last November — and six states previously. This year, South Dakota’s legislature has already placed an amendment on the 2026 ballot and, yesterday, Kansas did likewise.
Democrats continue to push for non-citizen voting, which liberal courts in California and Vermont have upheld for cities, and to oppose these state amendments. But last week, New York State’s highest (and quite liberal) court struck down New York City’s noncitizen voting ordinance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “Trump to Save Elections?”
For much the same reason that I believe that the US Supreme Court was wrong to void Congressional term limits effected by constituent states (U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton), I believe that neither Federal law nor Presidential Executive Orders should control how the constituent states manage their parts in Congressional and Presidential elections.
While I’d very much like to see many of the changes that President Trump is here trying to effect, don’t believe that Federal law is the proper way to effect most of them, and I think that an Executive Order is in those cases still worse. Moreover, I think that, at present, neither is properly constitutional in most cases.
Assuming that Federal legislation does not first render the issue moot, I’m sure that the Supreme Court will rule that the President has overstepped his prerogatives.
If indeed Federal legislation is passed (before or after the Court rules on the Executive Order), the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to revisit U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, perhaps to good effect.
That’s a pretty quick turn from the GOP’s 2020 “state legislatures can do anything they want, including changing the way of choosing electors after the votes have already been cast and with full immunity from their own state courts’ judgments” play to the “federal executive branch must control everything” position.